The slippery slope
In music as in baseball, we all play a role in scandal
BY Dave Bidini
Photograph by dethtrip99 (from flickr)
The past few weeks, Harper’s Lewis Lapham (subscription only) and Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum made comments regarding outrage over the Roger Clemens steroid scandal. They suggested that, in a society hell-bent on anti-aging tinctures, plastic breasts and noses, 17-hour erections and Botox’ed lips, the fact the public has expressed shock over an athlete’s desire to synthetically build a perfect physical machine is shocking in itself. They both argued that players flouting the game’s substance-abuse rules is one matter; our greater society compelling them to do so is another. With the importance of achievement and competitiveness and success drummed into our heads from youth—supplanting such basic elements of good-life guidance as freedom, altruism and happiness—one would assume that athletes like Miguel Tejada and Marion Jones would receive empathy from those of us who, in our own small way, have aped their behaviour. Instead, we express outrage while stapling baseball players to the cross.
If this ethical slippery slope is mirrored in today’s Canadian musical society, it can found in the corporatization of new Canadian rock. More than ever before, Canadian bands—from the Be Good Tanyas to Joel Plaskett to Feist—have attached themselves to corporate brands as a way of maximizing their popularity. It’s become the standard for new bands to partner with big business as a way of promoting their music, mostly through songs sold as television ad jingles. These days, bands are required to make a moral choice about whether or not to skate through their careers unstriped—The Weakerthans, Canada’s northern Fugazi, have, for instance, stayed the purer course—in the same way that bands once decided what kind of van to rent or where to take their publicity photos or what kind of glitter to wear on stage. Chasing the corporate engine to get one’s songs placed in a Zellers ad has become normal behaviour in the same way that major league ballplayers shooting HGH is now merely part of the athletic tapestry. While it’s true that Fats Waller once sang for toothpaste ads and Gaylord Perry threw the spitter, the climate of the times was different, and corporations were less conscious of consumer control or pelting our eyeline with brands and logos.
There are other parts of Canadian music that have been affected by the dangle of big business. One of the country’s dirty little secrets is that many of our leading bands rely on high-paying corporate gigs to sustain their lifestyles. A friend once told me that the money earned from being hired to play a single corporate gig matches what he’d make during a week of Canadian touring. As a result, his band plays far fewer public shows at home, and instead of developing fresh new material in front of eager fans, they’re paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to refine their hits-laden repertoire for Mac employees hammered on company punch. To this end, the creative output of some of our biggest bands has become stunted, and instead of producing great works in the latter stages of their careers, the gravy train carries them into the corporate twilight. Not that there have been many dissenting voices among fans and journalists. Instead of demanding more shows, they wish they worked for Sony, too, so that, once in awhile, they could hear their favourite band play. That said, there’s a reason why these gigs are unpublicized. Bands are fearful how this will affect their reputation, and whether their greater fan base will hold them accountable.
But once you’re on the tit, it’s hard to pry yourself away, whether you’re Barry Bonds or that rags-to-riches band from Grande Prairie. In the musician’s case, the manager tries outfoxing his peers for that plum Easter concert where one lucky employee’s last-quarter productivity numbers won him the opportunity to introduce the band; in the pitcher’s case, you hire a personal trainer who has unmatched connections and can furtively administer the drug without a trace. But because most fans continue to buy records and season-ticket packages; because journalists write about the triumph of getting a song placed in the new IMG ad rather than the poetic subtext of Line Two in Verse Three in Song Four on Side Two; because society wallows in the kind of consumer excess that makes it possible for RIM to hire Van Halen to perform at their Air Canada Centre Christmas party, or the New York Yankees to buy Andy Pettite on the free market; and because many Canadian bands feel they can reconcile singing about the world’s condition while playing for Sunoco or the federal Tories; then the forces of rock and roll and sports will be divided among those who do, and those who don’t. Until now, the game has been a one-sided bloodbath of values.
